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The news that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's youngest daughter Vivienne has legally filed to drop Pitt’s surname makes her their fourth child to do so.
One week after turning 18, Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt submitted a petition in Los Angeles County Superior Court, and a hearing has been scheduled for 2 November in what has become an internationally public bid by the children to distance themselves from their father.
Shiloh, a dancer and the former couple’s first biological child, was the first of the siblings to be granted a name change on their 18th birthday in 2024 and now goes by Shiloh Jolie.
Zahara and Maddox were next to take action to drop their paternal surname in a public move that, at first, seemed unusually cruel and heartless. After all, when children drop their father’s name from a double-barrelled surname, they usually do it quietly and with minimal fuss, but when Zahara and Maddox Jolie-Pitt decided to drop the “Pitt”, they did so by taking out full-page ads in the Los Angeles Daily Journal.
Brad Pitt is said to have been left “devastated” by the news that two more of his children have made legal bids to drop his surname. The public display of non-affection will have twisted the knife, but it is part of the process which requires a published legal notice in case of any objection from concerned parties.
One notice reads: “Petitioner Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt filed a petition with this court for a decree changing names as follows: Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt to Zahara Marley Jolie.” Another states: “Petitioner Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt filed a petition with this court for a decree changing names as follows: Maddox Chivan Jolie-Pitt to Maddox Chivan Jolie.” If they are approved, the changes will become official in court, with Maddox’s hearing scheduled for 14 September and Zahara’s on 28 September.
It’s another tragic blow for Pitt, 62, but one that, while painful, he will have almost certainly seen coming. His relationship with his six children has been strained – if not completely non-existent – for years. Ever since his dramatic split and acrimonious divorce from their mother, Angelina Jolie, 51, which took eight years before it was finalised in December 2024, the children have very much taken their mother’s side. Jolie has accused him of physical and emotional abuse in court documents, although Pitt denies this. Pitt has been investigated and cleared by multiple agencies. For this part, Pitt has accused his ex of alienating their offspring, which she also denies.
With the youngest of their children, twins Vivienne and Knox, turning 18 this month, a significant line is being drawn in the sand; it is being made very clear where their loyalties lie. As a Hollywood source tells me: “There wasn’t much of a custody arrangement in place at this point anyway as the kids are mostly all grown up. But now the twins are 18; none of them is required to have anything to do with Brad at all – and Angelina certainly wouldn’t have to communicate with Brad about the kids if she didn’t want to. A painful chapter is now closed.”
The six children, two of whom, Maddox and Pax, Pitt adopted as his own after Jolie initially adopted them solo in 2002 and 2007 respectively, are telling us loud and clear that their new chapter doesn’t involve Pitt.
All of the children but Pax, who is now 22, had previously dropped the “Pitt” to be known only by their mother’s maiden name. Knox, 18, recently graduated from Fusion Academy in Los Angeles; his diploma reportedly listed him as “Knox Jolie” rather than “Knox Jolie-Pitt.” His twin sister, Vivienne, previously made headlines in 2024 when she was credited as “Vivienne Jolie” in the programme for the Broadway production The Outsiders. Now she is taking legal action to make it official.
Meanwhile, Shiloh also took legal action on her 18th birthday, 27 May 2024, petitioning to change her name from “Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt” to “Shiloh Nouvel Jolie”, reportedly hiring and paying for lawyers herself. Pax, 22, was the only one not to have publicly dropped his father’s name; however, the signs of tension between them were writ large.
In 2020, Pax caused a headache for Pitt when he branded him a “world-class a**hole” and an “awful human being” in a damning post on his Instagram story, on Father’s Day, which was leaked to the media and resurfaced in later years. The teenager allegedly claimed that Pitt “made the lives of those closest to [Pax] a constant hell”.
Pitt has responded to this in the past. A source within Pitt’s inner circle said: “It's frustrating to see Brad being painted as some kind of ‘bad person’ when it's far from the truth.” The Sun went on to quote them adding that Pitt has “great respect” for his children, arguing that it “speaks volumes that he chooses to keep a dignified silence” about the situation.
While Pitt’s career continued to soar, Jolie is said to have struggled to recover in the years after the split ... She has taken selective acting roles since
More recently, however, it has been reported that Pax has maintained a relationship with Pitt’s sister, his aunt Julie Pitt and his cousins Sydney and Reagan and was recently spotted at a family dinner to celebrate Sydney’s engagement (though Brad is not thought to have been present himself).
The series of very public disownments from his children is undoubtedly a PR disaster for Pitt, who enjoys a “Mr Nice Guy” image in Hollywood. As it stands, the family strife doesn’t seem to have dented his career too much: in fact, it has flourished since he split from Jolie. He won his first Oscar for his role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; his recent turn in F1 was lauded; he was an executive producer on Netflix’s hit drama Adolescence last year, and he got a coveted invite to Taylor Swift’s wedding earlier this month.
His relationship with Swiss jewellery designer Ines de Ramon, 29-years his junior, is said to be going from strength to strength since they were first linked in late 2022, and they’ve been seen looking loved-up at the French Open and the France vs Belgium World Cup match in recent weeks.
As a Hollywood power player with a huge production company, called Plan B, he’s not easy to topple. Pitt is said to have hired a crisis PR team to help him mitigate the blowback that any stories about his estrangement from his children might lead to. And, let’s face it, he’s proven his Teflon qualities after years of playing the lead on endless tabloid cover stories which accused him of leaving then-wife Jennifer Aniston for Jolie, after they met on the set of Mr and Mrs Smith in 2004.
While the women in his life were pitted against each other, he seemed to get off scot-free, and it’s hard not to wonder whether Aniston feels like she had a lucky escape now she’s happily settled down with the unproblematic – and non-famous – life coach Jim Curtis.
The bitterness towards Pitt from his children almost certainly comes from the drama surrounding their parents’ split. Court filings and reports linked to the couple’s legal disputes revealed claims that Pitt was physically and verbally abusive toward Jolie and some of their children during a flight on a private jet in 2016.
Jolie alleged he grabbed and shook her, pushed her into a wall, and struck the plane ceiling, while also behaving aggressively toward their children when they intervened. Pitt has denied allegations, and following an investigation, the FBI and child welfare authorities did not bring criminal charges.
While Pitt’s career continued to soar, Jolie is said to have struggled to recover in the years after the split. In an interview with The Guardian a few years later, Jolie said all she wanted was the peace for her “family to heal”. She has taken selective acting roles since then, appearing as opera singer Maria Callas in the 2024 biopic – a performance which was lauded by critics but garnered little recognition in Hollywood.
Last year’s project, Couture, about a filmmaker diagnosed with breast cancer, was incredibly personal. In 2013, Jolie revealed she’d undergone a preventative double mastectomy after genetic testing revealed she carried the high-risk BRCA1 gene mutation. She has reportedly signed up for a third Maleficent film, mainly because she needs the money.
Last month, Jolie said that her kids wanted her to start living her life again. She told Variety, "My kids are almost all 18, so now they want to see me travelling the world, they want me to get out and do things. They know me more than anybody, and they still like me, which says a lot. I think they’re very encouraging of me kind of getting back to aspects of myself that maybe I hadn’t felt as free to do."
And yet, there is the perpetual financial and emotional cost of the ongoing court battle with Pitt over Jolie’s sale of her share of their French vineyard Chateau Miraval. Jolie’s decision to sell her shares of the $164m (£122m) estate to Tenute del Mondo, the wine division of the Stoli Group, in 2021 sparked a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed by Pitt in 2022.
The case, set to go to trial next year, has already been an exhausting back-and-forth, with damaging details of their marriage being unearthed in the process. Pitt has now pushed for Jolie’s private communications to be unsealed (a judge granted this motion in December). Jolie’s attorney, Paul Murphy, said her team were “disappointed by the court’s interpretation of California's privilege law”. He added, “The court’s ruling violates that law, undermines Ms Jolie’s fundamental right to a fair trial..." The statement continued. "We will appeal."
It is this deteriorating relationship that many believe is behind the finality of the decision of Zahara and Maddox to drop Pitt from their names. Sources close to Pitt say he is “heartbroken” to be missing out on his children’s lives, their successes and graduations. This is the man who dedicated his 2022 Oscar win to his children, telling the audience, “This is for my kids, who colour everything I do. I adore you.” One Hollywood insider explained, “This has broken Brad’s heart; his family broke down and there doesn’t seem to be any going back.”
Jolie is understandably keen to draw a line under this whole traumatic chapter – and she’s made it clear that could mean quitting Hollywood altogether. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2024, Jolie explained: “I am here because I have to be here from a divorce, but as soon as they’re 18, I’ll be able to leave.” She added, “I’ll spend a lot of time in Cambodia. I’ll spend time visiting my family members wherever they may be in the world.”
She is seemingly desperate to move on and be set free from all this. “To be candid, I haven’t dated since I divorced a decade ago,” Jolie told Entertainment Tonight last month. “So I kind of get in my head that that aspect of me is not centred in my life if I’m focusing on my children, my family. It doesn’t feel like I’m 51 and starting to think of being older. I’m thinking I have to live again. Be free again.”
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